


A Moment's Respite

by OrilliaOrange



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Spoilers for Here Lies the Abyss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-06-06 01:31:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6732367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrilliaOrange/pseuds/OrilliaOrange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Varric and Hawke share a moment after Adamant</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Moment's Respite

**Author's Note:**

> Previously mis-posted with my Cassandra/Varric fics. Prompted by archaeologistliaratsoni, filled as part of the Fic a Day in May challenge.

Varric sleeps curled in on himself, squeezed as small as he can beneath the blankets. He always has done, so long as Hawke’s known him. The sight of Varric (what she can see of him- a tangle of ruddy gold brown hair, the tip of one reddened ear) is so familiar, it aches. Much like the rest of her, Hawke notices. She is several large bruises doing an unconvincing impression of a woman. 

“Ow,” she tells the ceiling. A gryphon carved into the corner is incredibly unsympathetic, and Hawke sticks her tongue out at it. “No wonder Carver likes you lot.” 

“Y’r talkin’ to y’rself,” Varric mumbles. 

Maker help her but it is _adorable_ when he does that thing with his face mushed into the pillow. 

“It’s the only hope for intelligent conversation here,” Hawke says. Varric grouses, emerging from his nest of pillows and blankets to give her a dirty look. 

“You look like shit,” Hawke says, mostly because it’s true but mostly because it’s a normal thing to say. 

As normal as waking up the day after an excursion into the Fade and fighting a Nightmare demon with the aid of the spirit of Divine Justinia can get, anyway.

“Like knows like,” Varric says. 

He manages to sit up, and Hawke hisses in a horrified breath. 

“Varric-” at the last moment she stops herself from touching his shoulder. Given the still-healing gash there, he’s lucky to _have_ a shoulder. His chest is mottled black and red from his collarbones down past where the blankets cover, pocked with pink spots from where the potions have begun working on mending rent flesh. 

“You should see the other guy,” Varric says. He rasps out a laugh. 

Hawke glares at him, to keep her eyes from watering. Varric looks awful, like someone who dodged death by a hairsbreadth. 

“Varric the _other guy_ was an ENORMOUS NIGHTMARE DEMON!” Her voice is too high, too angry. “In the _FADE!_ ” 

If the look she’d got before was dirty, the one she gets now is _foul._

“You’re giving me a lecture?” Varric asks. “After what you tried to do?”

He never shouts. Hawke hates him a little for that. Sometimes it feels as if things would be better between them if he’d just lose his temper and yell at her, if he’d just say all the things that never get said. He doesn’t, though. Just becomes colder and meaner until it’s like arguing with a pissed off icicle. 

It takes a lot of effort to keep her voice at an acceptable level. 

“You’re my best friend,” Hawke says. “Who the hell else is going to scold you for getting your ass kicked by a demon?”

She means it to be lighthearted, to diffuse the awkwardness between them. 

Varric’s expression freezes. 

“Not the woman who almost stayed in the Fade herself,” he bites out. “She doesn’t have the right.” 

“Someone had to try-” Hawke says. 

“And it had to be you,” Varric replies. He says it in a way that manages to be angry and bone tired at the same time. As though he’s resigned himself. “I didn’t want it to be me,” she says. It’s not what she meant to say. “I thought it was going to be, and I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to-” 

Her voice breaks. Hawke gasps in a breath, dragging it in through her squeezed-tight throat, past the lump there. Her eyes burn. Varric swears with feeling and creativity. 

Hawke musters a smile, wiping her face on her sleeve. 

“You’re an asshole,” she says.

“I’m an asshole,” Varric agrees. “Can I-?”

He doesn’t get the rest of his sentence out. Hawke flings herself across the bed. Carefully. Varric smells like elfroot and embrium and sweat, but he’s warm and he’s _alive_ and Hawke doesn’t give a flying damn about anything else. Varric leans his head on her shoulder, arms loosely wound around her waist. Hawke sniffles, rests her cheek on the top of Varric’s head. 

“I would’ve missed you,” she murmurs. “That was the worst part. I didn’t want to go, because I would’ve left you behind.” 

She can feel Varric swallow, feel his arms pull her closer to his poor bruised body. 

“Don’t,” he says. “You’re here, I don’t-” 

Hawke smiles into his hair. 

“S’alright,” she says. “I’m here.” 

Varric curls himself into her side, his fingers wending their way between hers. 

“Good, otherwise this would be the worst hallucination ever,” he says. 

“Ass,” Hawke says.


End file.
